Apple's next mobile OS begins to take shape, but take these with a grain of salt.

iOS 7.1 was released earlier this week, ending months of speculation about its contents and release date. Undeterred, the Apple rumor mill continues to churn, and this week 9to5Mac publishedfourseparatereports on what the company is supposedly planning for iOS 8.

We usually avoid dipping into these kinds of unverifiable rumors, especially this early in a product's development cycle. 9to5Mac's original Apple reporting has proven to be surprisingly accurate over the course of the last year or so, but in each of those four pieces, writer Mark Gurman notes that all of this is very early information and subject to change as development continues. Still, the rumors are detailed enough (and voluminous enough) that they give us some vague idea of what Apple might be planning for its next mobile operating system.

Public transit for Maps

Enlarge/ Apple Maps still can't do its own work when it comes to public transit directions.

Andrew Cunningham

This first one isn't much of a surprise—Apple hired some people to work on public transit directions in Maps all the way back in October of 2013. In both iOS 6 and iOS 7, the Apple Maps app has relied on external, third-party applications to supply public transit directions to city dwellers. The problem is that using them kicks you out of Apple's app and into a hellscape of inconsistent, poorly maintained programs that are sometimes little more than a transit map you have to pinch-and-zoom around to use. You might not care about this if you live in a rural area, but if you live in or are visiting a big city and need to get around, Google Maps for iOS offers what is far and away a better experience (though it's worth noting that, yes, Google Maps is one of the external applications that Apple Maps can turn to for transit directions).

Separating iTunes Radio

Again, this one isn't a stretch. Apple is said to be considering making iTunes Radio its own separate app, breaking it out from the main Music app where it currently resides. This move would both give iTunes Radio more visibility and alleviate the complaints of those who just want to listen to their locally stored music—right now, iTunes Radio isn't just integrated into the Music app, it's front and center in the Music app. Even if the interface and other features don't change at all, splitting the Music app into two applications serves both ends.

iOS versions of TextEdit and Preview?

Alleged early versions of the TextEdit and Preview apps, along with the previously rumored "Healthbook" fitness app and a new "Tips" app. Some of these icons are clearly either faked or placeholders.

The first two rumors are logical changes, and they're fairly self-evident if you look at iOS 7 and try to evaluate where it falls short. But this rumor—maybe not so much. Apple is said to be testing out iOS versions of the OS X TextEdit and Preview applications for purposes of iCloud syncing. Both of these applications have supported iCloud sync since OS X 10.8, which works just fine for syncing files between two Macs. However, because iCloud data is stored in app-specific silos that aren't accessible by other applications, iOS devices have no way of getting at these files. According to Gurman, the new iOS versions of TextEdit and Preview would be read-only applications meant specifically to view these files but not to change them (making for a potentially awkward situation in which Apple ships an app called TextEdit that can't, um, edit text).

We understand that Apple doesn't want to expose iCloud's filesystem and that it doesn't even want iPhone users to think about that kind of thing. Still, it feels a little uncharacteristic that Apple might consider adding a couple of potentially duplicative, confusing applications to its operating system just to circumvent its own self-imposed technical limitations. Imagine it from the perspective of a first-time iPhone or iPad user. Do you write text down in TextEdit? Or in Notes? Or in this free Pages app that the App Store prompts you to download? What about Preview? Do you use that to load and edit images, or do you use Photos? What about PDFs? Apple pundits like to quote this line from Steve Jobs about "start[ing] with the user experience and working backward to the technology," but adding read-only TextEdit and Preview apps to iOS just to serve iCloud's data model seems like the opposite approach.

The report isn't clear on whether these new apps would ship with iOS 8 or if they would be standalone applications released at about the same time. Releasing them as standalone applications à la the current Podcasts app might help solve some of the usability problems—the apps wouldn't be there by default to muddle the experience for new users, but people who wanted them and knew what they were getting into could still download and use them. Either way, color us skeptical about these; we don't doubt that Apple is testing them, but we're far less sure that they'll ever see the light of day.

Other additions and APIs

iOS 7.1 brought substantial changes to both the performance and the interface of iOS 7, and the next version will continue to refine the design. Apple is reportedly considering combining the "All" and "Missed" notifications tabs into a single tab, adding a timed auto-deletion feature for received texts and iMessages to prevent the caches from ballooning, and removing the Game Center app in favor of letting that information live within the games themselves. A wireless version of the CarPlay feature is said to be in the works as well—the current version requires you to connect a Lightning-equipped iPhone to your car, but we've seen evidence of CarPlay-over-wireless testing before.

Of these, the biggest change would be a purported API that would allow for better communication between apps, something akin to the Intents system in Android. Currently, most iOS applications can only interact with other Apple-sanctioned applications or services. You can post to Facebook or Twitter, for example, but not to Google+. The Dropbox app can upload photos from your camera roll, but uploading other kinds of files is a frustrating ad-hoc free-for-all. An API could relax some of these restrictions. Tim Cook said in May of last year that Apple was considering opening up its APIs "more in the future, but not to the degree that we put the consumer at risk of having a bad experience."

Some of these new additions sound more logical than others, but all we can say for sure this early in the game is that we can't say anything for sure. We'll likely get our first official look at iOS 8 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in the early summer, followed shortly after by the typical series of developer betas leading up to the final release in the fall. We'll continue to provide coverage as Apple's next mobile OS takes shape.

Andrew Cunningham
Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue. Twitter@AndrewWrites